Down on the Farm

— Mark Sheldon wrote a piece on the Reds farm system yesterday. Mark discusses many of the team’s top prospects in his article, but of current major league interest is the club’s view of Tony Cingrani. They discussed promoting him to the major league bullpen when they put Sean Marshall on the disable list, but

“Cingrani is the first callup if one of my starters goes down,” Baker said on Wednesday.

— JD Sussman of Fangraphs.com wrote an article in high praise of SP prospect Robert Stephenson. He describes Stephenson’s three primary offerings (fastball, curveball, change-up), then concludes with this paragraph:

This winter I argued Stephenson should be included among a highly touted trio of right-handed starters; Archie Bradley, Aaron Sanchez and Noah Syndergaard and that he was a better prospect than Billy Hamilton, but I may have undersold him. He could surpasses them all and end up on many mid season Top 10 lists.

Now, onto Games Played on 4/11/2013

Minor League Player of the Day: Louisville Bats starting pitcher Greg Reynolds threw 7 shutout innings, allowing just two hits and no walks.

Keith Law is a big fan of Stephenson. Calls him ” The Lighthouse” though I’m not sure why. I hope they skip Bakersfield for him, that place is where pitchers go to die. If he performs well, toss him into the fire at AA, make him repeat if you feel it’s necessary. He’s a really exciting prospect. Sits upper-90s and his curveball makes some scouts on twitter salivate. To think of a rotation with Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Cingrani and Stephenson in 3 years is exciting to me. But that’s a lot of time. Here’s to him making it.

When they signed Greg Reynolds, they didn’t see him as anything but a filler player. He was the overall #2 draft pick in 2006 (same years as Drew Stubbs). The Rockies gave up on him. It would be nice if the Reds backed in to a situation were they picked up a lights out pitcher who just needed a few minor tweaks by Tedd Powers to get on the right path.